Deluxe Corporation (NYSE: DLX), headquartered in St. Paul, Minn. provides a variety of products and services that help small businesses and financial institutions attract and retain customers.In addition to its personalized printed products, Deluxe offers a growing suite of business services, including logo design, payroll, web design and hosting, business networking and other web-based services to help small businesses grow. In the financial services industry, Deluxe sells check programs and fraud prevention, customer loyalty and retention programs to help banks build lasting relationships and grow core deposits.

Deluxe’s Challenge

Deluxe sales and support representatives do much of their selling by phone, and product demos are key to those interactions. Deluxe reps often need to share their screens with customers, either to close business or resolve service issues.

In recent years, Deluxe sales reps found that time pressure had increasingly become the key challenge small business owners faced when working with Deluxe over the phone. Customers would say, “I don’t have much time - if you can’t do this fast, I have to go.” Mark McCarthy, Director of Sales Competency and Training for Deluxe, knew the company had to find a way to shorten screen-sharing sessions without sacrificing the quality of interactions.

“It’s easier to demonstrate to a customer how our financial payroll services work rather than just talk about it over the phone,” says McCarthy. “But our small business customers don’t have the capacity, time or resources to engage in a lengthy series of meetings. We wanted a fast and easy screen-sharing tool that would enable reps to quickly and clearly demonstrate our offerings so customers could make a decision on the spot.” McCarthy knew that if Deluxe could better engage customers during the demo process, its sales revenue would rise.

How Glance Helps

As he researched possible alternatives, McCarthy came across an article by a respected blogger on Glance and his interest was piqued.

Glance’s service is known for simplicity and speed – session participants are connected in seconds with one click and no software to download. Reps simply invite customers to visit their personal Glance URL and enter a 4-digit security key code, and moments later the customer can see the rep’s screen. Reps can share control of their mouse and keyboard, so it feels like they’re working side-by-side with the customer, and can even initiate reverse sessions where they can view the customer’s screen (with permission).

It was just what Deluxe needed. After an evaluation, McCarthy and his team implemented Glance. Deluxe customers now enjoy the instant connection that Glance’s screen-sharing service provides. Deluxe sales reps can quickly demo online marketing services, work together to customize retail products, negotiate contracts and deliver training, all via Glance sessions. Because no data is exchanged between devices, sessions are completely secure – critical given that many Deluxe customers are financial institutions.

Glance is now a key part of the company’s formal sales process for two nationwide sales groups in the United States and parts of Canada. In addition, Deluxe often uses Glance internally as a tool to train its own staff on its products and services.

“Glance has met all of our expectations and is simple to use and administer. Our sales reps love Glance,” says McCarthy.

Results

Currently Deluxe has more than 100 sales and service reps nationwide using Glance, all day, every day. Recently, Deluxe launched a new retail business services division and Glance was essential to the success of this launch due to the volume of demos required.

McCarthy reports that productivity has definitely improved since Deluxe implemented Glance and the feedback from the sales divisions has been overwhelmingly positive. Sales reps no longer hear from their customers “I don’t have time for this,” and Glance has proven to be highly reliable enabling reps to spend more time selling.

McCarthy originally purchased individual licenses for Deluxe reps, but upgraded to an enterprise license in 2011 to accommodate the company’s growing use of Glance. Next up, Deluxe will integrate Glance with salesforce.com, its sales and service system of record. This will enable Deluxe reps to launch collaborative sales and support sessions simply by clicking on a Glance icon appearing on any salesforce.com object. Glance for Salesforce automatically tracks and stores all session activity, enabling real-time, accurate reporting, and allows customers to join sessions from any mobile device, including iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

“Glance has made a major impact on our team’s productivity and helped shorten our sales cycles considerably,” says McCarthy. “Glance was the right choice for us. Our customers want a quick and easy product demo, and Glance delivers.”